Poems from a Witch’s Pocket

Laura Theis grew up in a place where each street was named after a different fairy tale. She writes in her second language. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Oxford Poetry, Magma, Rattle, Mslexia, The Caterpillar, Tyger Tyger, and others. Her poetry debut was the winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, and an Elgin Award nominee. Her collection A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things won the Live Canon Collection Prize and received the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. She lives in Oxford.

• so you want to become a hovel witch ... 1 Menagerie ... 4 Note Found Next To An Empty Basket ... 5 wolf song ... 7 Five Clues For Working Out Which Bird You’ve Become ... 9 I complain to my friend who has been turned into a tree ... 13 A Poem In Which I Disagree With One Of My Favourites ... 15 how to walk on water ... 17 witches also have bad days ... 18 cave ... 20 Summoning Spell ... 21 where I travel at night ... 24 Disappointing Ducks ... 26 gift note ... 28 sapling ... 31 my sister dreams she is a garden ... 33 next time the sadness comes ... 34 October Cauldron Song ... 37 Party Planning Notes – Pumpkin Party – To Do ... 38 winter spell ... 40 B/AD ... 42 Refusal ... 45 Come In & Meet The Cat ... 47 Unfortunately The Witches’ Code ... 49 the faraway siblings ... 51 Hibernation Spell ... 52 bad fairytale ... 53 Spell Song For Extra Courage ... 57 the solitude of guarding a dragon ... 58 Write your own poems! ... 63 Acknowledgements ... 66 Thank-yous ... 67 About the author ... 69 About the illustrator ... 70 About The Emma Press ... 71 Also from The Emma Press ... 72

‘For me, this is the sort of magic that only a poem can accomplish... There is depth and complexity here – about ecology, about friendship – but this is all worn lightly and the tone is sustained with great skill and beauty from start to finish.’ - Kate Wakeling, CLiPPA & The Week Jnr Prize-winning poet